Welcome to my stop on the Great Escapes Virtual Book Tour for The Case of the Christie Conspiracy: A Detection Club Mystery by Kelly Oliver. Stop by each blog on the tour for interviews, guest posts, spotlights, reviews and more!
The Case of the Christie Conspiracy: A Detection Club Mystery by Kelly Oliver
The Case of the Christie Conspiracy: A Detection Club Mystery
Historical Cozy Mystery
1st in Series
Setting – London, England
Publisher : Boldwood Books (February 16, 2025)
Paperback : 264 pages
Agatha Christie is about to embark on a new, gripping murder case. But this time, she’s not the author – she’s a suspect…
1926 – Christie is a darling of the literary circuit and the most desired guest in London’s glittering social scene. She can often be found at meetings of the Detection Club – where mystery writers come together to share ideas, swap secrets and drink copiously. But then a fellow author’s initiation ceremony takes a gruesome turn, and one of the group ends up dead. Now, Agatha is no longer just the creator of great mystery plots – she’s a player in one.
And when Agatha disappears the day after the murder, she’s widely assumed to be guilty. Only Eliza Baker, assistant to the Club’s enigmatic secretary, Dorothy Sayers, is interested in investigating the case. But in a world where murder is the ultimate plot device, can Eliza piece together the evidence and find the killer before it’s too late?
Character Guest Post
The Case of the Christie Conspiracy: My Role in the Mystery
By Eliza Baker, protagonist
If you ask my chess playing buddy Theo Sharp, he’d go on about how mystery fiction is a puzzle, a grand intellectual exercise where every piece slots neatly into place. He’s always prattling on about deductive reasoning and philosophy, but frankly, I haven’t the patience for all that. A crime is a crime. You follow the evidence and you catch the criminal. No need for overcomplicated theories or abstract nonsense.
Which is why Kelly Oliver’s The Case of the Christie Conspiracy is such an interesting one—because for once, I wasn’t just listening to authors bragging about their latest clever plot twist, I was in it. And let me tell you, it’s a lot harder to get answers when people are lying to your face instead of neatly confessing by the last chapter.
The Detection Club—now, there’s a nest of foxes if I’ve ever seen one. Supposedly, they’re an elite group of mystery writers, but they’re as competitive as a bunch of school kids fighting over who gets to be head prefect. They have secret rituals, swear an oath on a skull they named Eric, and drink far too much. I should know—I’m their secretary, which mostly involves making sure their egos don’t combust and ensuring they don’t get themselves arrested.
Some of them wanted Agatha expelled after The Murder of Roger Ackroyd came out, all pearl-clutching and gasping about how she “betrayed the sacred rules of fair play.” I guess misleading readers is only a sin when someone other than them does it. Agatha carried on writing bestsellers while they fumed in their armchairs. But then Neville Lively turned up dead, and suddenly, the game changed.
Ah, Neville. Arrogant, insufferable, and apparently unaware that making enemies of your fellow crime writers is a bad idea when they spend all their time imagining the perfect murder. Someone shot him in a locked dining room at Theo’s initiation ceremony into the club—because, of course, they did—and the next day, Agatha vanished. Coincidence? Not bloody likely.
Dorothy Sayers, who usually has a tongue sharp enough to slice through a scandal, was uncharacteristically quiet. Theo and I had to work fast—too many suspects, too many moving pieces, and none of them keen to tell the truth. Neville had been at odds with Anthony Berkeley. Gilbert Chesterton had a moral code as strict as a headmistress with a ruler, and Neville certainly didn’t live up to it. Fergus Briggs, well, let’s just say his financial troubles weren’t exactly a well-kept secret. And then there’s Maud. Maud Wilkinson changed outfits as often as she changed her alibi.
I wasn’t just going to sit back and let them spin their stories. When you spend enough time around mystery writers, you start to suspect that they might just be capable of writing themselves a real-life alibi. But who among them had the gall to turn fiction into fact? And what did Agatha know that made her disappear just after Neville turned up dead? We all worried she’d been the killers next victim. Either that or the prime suspect!
Luckily, I had two things on my side: Theo, whose brain is almost as useful as it is irritating, and Queenie, my beagle, who has better instincts than half the so-called detectives I’ve met. Queenie sniffed out more clues than some of the so-called experts in that room, and honestly, I trust her judgment more than most people’s.
Chess and detective work aren’t so different—you look for patterns, anticipate moves, and know when to sacrifice a pawn to capture the king. And right now? Someone had just taken their first move, and I wasn’t about to let them play me like a fool.
These aren’t genteel authors solving puzzles over tea; they’re ambitious, sharp, and sometimes dangerous. In The Case of the Christie Conspiracy crime writers don’t just write about murder. Some actually commit it.
As for me? I lived it. And trust me, the truth is always stranger than fiction.
About Kelly Oliver
Kelly Oliver is the award-winning and bestselling author of four mystery series: The Jessica James Mysteries (7-book contemporary suspense); The Pet Detective Mysteries (3-book middle grade); The Fiona Figg Mysteries (9-book historical cozies).
The Case of the Christie Conspiracy, the first in her new series The Detection Club Mysteries just came out (February 2025).
Kelly is Distinguished Emerita Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. And currently, she is the Immediate Past President of Sisters in Crime. To learn more about Kelly and her books, go to www.kellyoliverbooks.com.
Author Links
Website https://www.kellyoliverbooks.com
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/kellyoliverauthor/
BookBub https://www.bookbub.com/authors/kelly-oliver
Twitter/X @kellyoliverbook
TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@kellyoliverbooks
Instagram @kellyoliverbooks
Purchase Links
Amazon US – Amazon CA – Amazon AU – Amazon UK – Barnes&Noble – Kobo
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The Case of the Christie Conspiracy TOUR PARTICIPANTS
February 17 – Jody’s Bookish Haven – SPOTLIGHT
February 18 – The Mystery of Writing – AUTHOR GUEST POST
February 19 – Frugal Freelancer – CHARACTER INTERVIEW
February 20 – Wine Cellar Library – SPOTLIGHT
February 20 – Sapphyria’s Book Reviews – SPOTLIGHT
February 21 – Maureen’s Musings – SPOTLIGHT
February 21 – View from the Birdhouse – REVIEW
February 22 – Deal Sharing Aunt – AUTHOR INTERVIEW
February 22 – Escape With Dollycas Into A Good Book – SPOTLIGHT
February 23 – CelticLady’s Reviews – SPOTLIGHT
February 24 – Socrates Book Reviews – SPOTLIGHT
February 25 – Cozy Up With Kathy – REVIEW, AUTHOR INTERVIEW
February 26 – Christy’s Cozy Corners – CHARACTER GUEST POST
February 26 – Ruff Drafts – SPOTLIGHT
February 27 – Baroness Book Trove – SPOTLIGHT
February 27 – Novels Alive – REVIEW
February 28 – Books, Ramblings, and Tea – SPOTLIGHT
February 28 – Reading, Writing & Stitch-Metic – AUTHOR GUEST POST
March 1 – Sarah Can’t Stop Reading Books – REVIEW
March 2 – FUONLYKNEW – SPOTLIGHT
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Sounds like it will keep me turning the pages……looking forward to reading it